and the democrats in regards to moving forward on the fiscal cliff issue. it does seems as though they're running into logger heads here slowly before the last couple of days before the deadline to solve the fiscal cliff negotiations. the ftse 100, a couple of points higher at the moment. same going for the spanish market, the aex in the corner. we're looking at relatively flattish trade here in europe on christmas eve. let's recap off of what we've seen in asia in the overnight session here. you're looking at slight gains across the board. the shanghai composite up by .25%. you're seeing similar gains in the s&p asx and the hang seng, the kospi both a couple of points up to the upside, as well. currency markets, pretty stable trade, too. we're seeing slightly lower volumes to say the least as you would anticipate here during the holiday days. we are, though, flirt, a recent high is 1.32. a couple of sessions ago, we were down at the 1.29 mark. aussie/dollar flat. sterling seeing slight gains. just to wrap things up showing you what's taking place in fixed